mettre

Inherited from Middle French mettre, from Old French metre, from Latin mittere, probably from Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- (“to exchange, remove”).

• IPA^(key): /mɛtʁ/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Homophones: mètre, mètrent, mètres (general), maître, maîtres (except regionally)
• Rhymes: -ɛtʁ

mettre

1. (transitive) to put; to place
   • 1993, Aline Tauzin, Contes arabes de Mauritanie, →ISBN, page 133:

     il a pris un chiffon grisâtre et l’a mis sur la plaie

     He took a grayish cloth and placed it over the wound.

2. (transitive, of clothing) to put on

   Antonym: enlever

   • 2005, Marc Le Goupils, Revue de Paris, page 350:

     Elle n’avait pas mis son écharpe sur ses cheveux blonds

     She hadn't put her scarf over her blond hair.

3. (transitive, of table setting) to set
   • 1846, Jean Mallat de Bassilan, Les Philippines: histoire, géographie, moeurs, agriculture, industrie et commerce des colonies espagnoles dans l'Océanie, page 196:

     Il est déjà temps de manger / Mettez la table et la nappe

     It's already time to eat / Lay the table, put the cloth on.

4. (auxiliary, pronominal) to start (something / doing something)
   • 1829, Victor Hugo, Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné, section XXXIII:

     J’ouvris au hasard, je me rapprochai d’elle, elle appuya son épaule à mon épaule, et nous nous mîmes à lire chacun de notre côté, tout bas, la même page.

     I opened at random, I got close to her, she pressed her shoulder against my shoulder, and we each of us began on our own silently to read the same page.

5. (pronominal) to get around to it

This verb is conjugated like battre except that its past participle is mis, not *mettu, and its past historic and imperfect subjunctive are formed with mi-, not *metti-.

• Saint Dominican Creole French: mété
  • Haitian Creole: mete

• “mettre”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

• mectre, metre

From Old French metre, from Latin mittō.

mettre

1. to put; to place

• Middle French conjugation varies from one text to another. Hence, the following conjugation should be considered as typical, not as exhaustive.

• French: mettre

• maette (Guernsey)
• mett' (Jersey)

From Old French metre, from Latin mittō, mittere.

• Audio (Jersey):

  (file)

mettre

1. (Jersey) to put

• ôter (“to remove”)